Volunteers Keep Cultural Wheels Turning

February 10, 1995|By Steve Dale. Special to the Tribune.

They're a new kind of culture vulture; volunteers pouncing on the opportunity to learn.

For example, before Eileen Semeniuk of Alsip volunteered for the John G. Shedd Aquarium five years ago, her idea of an exotic underwater experience was dropping the soap on the shower floor. At the age of 51, she took scuba lessons. Today, she dives with nurse sharks and thinks nothing of it.

Semeniuk left her job as a secretary and felt like a fish out of water just sitting around the house. "It's not only that I needed to find something to do, I needed to learn," she says.

For 22 years, Kip Kelley of Glenview, his wife, Sherry, and their two children have all volunteered in various assignments for the Lyric Opera of Chicago. At one time or another, each member of the family has appeared on stage as an extra or, as they call it in the theater, a supernumerary.

"Volunteering for a cultural institution is fertilizer for the brain," says Kelley, who at 67 now travels around the Chicago area lecturing about opera.

Service- and health-related organizations, ranging from hospitals to the American Heart Association to local food pantries, always have depended on volunteers. However, it's a relatively new idea for cultural institutions to rely on the kindness of strangers.

In part, volunteering at cultural institutions swelled in the 1970s because of dwindling financial resources. And after all, who can turn away free help?

"Back then, we had volunteers doing all sorts of crazy things," recalls Barbara Mengel, manager of volunteer programs at the Art Institute of Chicago. "I had one woman reupholster some chairs. From the start, I found our volunteers more responsible than our employees. After all, they're here because they want to be."

Today, there are more than 500 volunteers at the Art Institute who work in 35 departments. One job is to simply count the paintings. "Sometimes curators move things around without doing all the paperwork; it's hard to keep track," Mengel explains.

Cultural institutions increasingly rely on their troupes of good-deed-doers. "It's our volunteers who are on the front lines meeting the public," says Rebecca Severson, manager of human resources at the Lincoln Park Zoo. "Zoo visitors aren't likely to speak with curators or keepers, but for docents and volunteers at the information booths-it's their job to be visible. In many ways, they represent our zoo and the messages we want conveyed to the public."

Without its 400 volunteers, the Chicago Architecture Foundation could not exist. Foundation guides are renowned around the world for their insightful, technically detailed and animated interpretations of Chicago architecture; visitors are often amazed that all the guides are volunteers. In 1994, luminaries ranging from foreign dignitaries to Bette Midler were among the 70,000 visitors on foundation tours.

"Our docents are goodwill ambassadors for the city," says Pat Patterson, the Chicago Architecture Foundation volunteer coordinator. "And it's not a responsibility we take lightly."

The foundation docents must first be accepted in what amounts to a job interview. That's followed by an eight-week course. Docents must also write their own programs.

Similarly, at the zoo, the docents are also screened before they commit to formal classes. Not all the would-be docents pass the rigorous science-laden course work. For those who do, there's a requirement to work four hours each week. (The zoo also utilizes volunteers for office work, gardening, the gift shop and at the information booths. For these volunteer positions, no schooling is required.)

At the foundation, "if you consider it all a chore, you should probably volunteer elsewhere," says Patterson. "Our volunteers are architecture fanatics; they can't get enough of it."

With 22 years as a volunteer at the Lincoln Park Zoo, North Side resident Charlene Ehlscheid pre-dates the docent training program. She recalls watching former zoo director Lester Fisher taping "Ark in the Park" with TV host Ray Rayner, feeding grapes to sloths once housed at the old Lion House, and a brain-damaged owl who could barely manage to stand on Ehlscheid's arm when she visited school groups.

But her most vivid memories are about people. Ehlscheid has given tours to countless members of the public, schoolchildren, and on one occasion, a group of Polish businessmen who could barely understand English. "My job is to interpret what we do at the zoo," she says. "Perhaps, some people now view animals differently. It's very gratifying to think I may have made a difference."